Amos 1: The Lord Roars
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Amos 1:1-2
Service Intro & Announcements:
Service Intro & Announcements:
Thank Donna. Welcome everyone, both local and online, to the family gathering of Eastern Hills. We are still in this kind of “soft opening” phase, where we can’t all be together just yet, but we’re doing what we can for the moment. We have no idea how long this stage is going to last, but we are wanting to be wise and loving for those among us who are the most vulnerable. We completely understand if you are going to stay online for services for the time being, if you don’t feel comfortable coming to the building just yet. We continue to pray for protection for our church family and healing for our city, state, nation, and the world.
If you’re here for the first time this morning, we’d like to connect with you so that we can pray for you, answer any questions you might have, or help meet a need if we can. This goes for both people here physically and those visiting online. If you’re here physically this morning, you can text the keyword WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link, and if you follow that link, it will ask you to fill out a contact card so we can stay connected. If you’re visiting with us online this morning, you can text the keyword LIVE to that same number 505-339-2004, and your contact card will be a little different: just your name and email address. We just want to be able to stay in contact with you and let you know as things change, and pray for you as we move through this crisis.
We are still planning our Independence Day night, and that will be from 5 until about 9 on Saturday, July 4. We have Pop-Pop’s coming, and we’re working on possibly having a couple of food trucks here so folks can buy their dinner and we can help out a local business. It will also be perfectly fine for you to bring your own dinner. Bring your safe and legal fireworks to light on the parking lot (hopefully that won’t get canceled). Given the state of things with COVID-19, we are going to have to plan on everyone having their masks and social distancing during the night. We’re going to try to have sufficient space for social distancing in our family groups, so we can have sort of “designated” spaces where we can have our masks off. I’ll be doing an update video and one call if anything changes after we hear from the Governor this week. We’d like to ask the kids and those with kids to do something special for this event: If you have a bike or a skateboard or a scooter that you ride, or if you’ve got a little one, a stroller or a wagon, we’d love to have a parade of those things that night. Could you decorate them and bring them with you? We’d really appreciate it! Again, 5-9 on Independence Day, Saturday, July 4.
Next month, July, we take up our annual offering for World Hunger and Disaster Relief. I hope you remember to get the goal from Donna before you got up here.
A reminder that the Scripture and notes for this morning’s sermon can be found in our Live Event on YouVersion. If you have the YouVersion app, you can just tap the “More” icon, then “Events,” and if you’re local, you should see our event. If you’re not local, you can search for “Eastern Hills Baptist Church” and you should find it in the list.
PRAY
Musical Worship & Praise
Musical Worship & Praise
This is Amazing Grace
Blessed Be Your Name
O Praise the Name (Anastasis)
Pray (Wayne)
Opening
Opening
This morning, we’re starting a new sermon series that will likely take us through the book of Amos. I’m calling it, “Amos: Prophet of Judgment & Justice.” I actually started looking at Amos in my quiet times back in March of this year, just as the coronavirus thing was starting up. As I studied through Amos personally, I really believed that God was pointing me in the direction of preaching through Amos, or at least some of the highlights in Amos.
Now, given the tone and message of this prophetic book, one might think that I’m kind of capitalizing on the current climate of our culture by preaching through a message of judgment and justice. But please understand that this is not the case. I believe that God was truly preparing me for what I would need to preach in this coming time of societal unrest and the major topic of justice. I will be completely honest and transparent with you: I don’t want to preach through Amos right now. I would personally rather preach something more thematically positive and uplifting. I even tried really hard this week to talk God into letting me feel at peace in NOT preaching Amos. But as Amos himself wrote in 3:8, “The Lord God has spoken, who will not prophesy?” I really don’t feel as if I have any choice but to obey what God has pointed me to and to humbly and faithfully preach it as best I can under the guidance of His Holy Spirit to the glory of Jesus Christ.
However, understand that this series is going to likely be quite heavy, in a time that feels pretty heavy anyway. My quiet times in Amos were very heavy, and things weren’t even as intense in our society at that point as they are now. When I started studying Amos, we were “All In This Together”. Now it seems that our nation has largely forgotten that rallying cry, and in many ways, we are anything but together. I pray that God’s message to the nation of Israel through His prophet Amos will translate well to our time and apply well to the situation in which we find ourselves.
This morning, we’re going to do some study in order to set the stage for the entire series, seeking to find our footing in Amos, a book that many haven’t spent a lot of time studying, so that before we progress through it, we can even now consciously choose to submit ourselves, our perspectives, and our wills under the Word of God.
Let’s stand and read our focal passage this morning, Amos 1:1-2:
1 The words of Amos, who was one of the sheep breeders from Tekoa—what he saw regarding Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. 2 He said: The Lord roars from Zion and makes his voice heard from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.
PRAY
As I said, many have never spent much time reading the book of Amos. Fewer still have studied the context of Amos in order to understand the setting of this 9 chapter prophecy. But if we are going to have a solid grasp on the “why’s” of God’s message in Amos, then we are going to need some foundation to stand on: what was going on in the background at the time.
Notice that Amos gives us a couple of hints as to when he was preaching, and to whom, in verse 1:
1 The words of Amos, who was one of the sheep breeders from Tekoa—what he saw regarding Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.
Let’s unpack this kind of phrase by phrase:
“…one of the sheep breeders from Tekoa...”
Tekoa was a village about 10 miles south of Jerusalem. Amos was a “sheep breeder,” which could mean that he owned sheep and bred them for profit, or that he was really just a shepherd who tended sheep. Given what he calls himself later in chapter 7, he probably was really just a shepherd and orchard manager for someone else:
14 So Amos answered Amaziah, “I was not a prophet or the son of a prophet; rather, I was a herdsman, and I took care of sycamore figs. 15 But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ”
Amos was no professional prophet or a priest of some kind. He wasn’t one of the religious elite. He was just a blue-collar guy who God called to share a very specific message to a particular people. And who were those people?
“What he saw regarding Israel...”
I said that Tekoa was 10 miles south of Jerusalem. This means that Tekoa was in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, not the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
The nation of Israel was a united nation at the inception of its monarchy. It had three kings at the beginning of the monarchy: Saul, then David, then David’s son Solomon. In 1 Kings 12, Solomon’s son Rehoboam was made king over Israel after Solomon’s death, and he was given a choice to deal kindly with his subjects, or to deal harshly with them. He decided to show off and deal harshly with them. That went exceedingly poorly for him, and the nation as divided as a result into two separate kingdoms: The Southern Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital; and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, with Samaria as its capital. Rehoboam ruled Judah, and a man named Jeroboam was appointed as king over Israel. This all took place in the late 900’s BC, around 930 or so.
The reason that this is important is that Amos is from Judah, and he has a message regarding Israel. These two nations didn’t really get along very well. They were constantly at odds with each other, and this happened right from the start of the divided nation. For a prophet to come from Judah with a message for Israel would have bothered those in the Northern Kingdom very much.
Now, before we go on with Amos, I would like to take a moment to help us understand a little of the tension between these two nations. Before Jeroboam had been appointed king over the Northern Kingdom, God had spoken to him, and had given him a very great promise:
38 “ ‘After that, if you obey all I command you, walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight in order to keep my statutes and my commands as my servant David did, I will be with you. I will build you a lasting dynasty just as I built for David, and I will give you Israel. 39 I will humble David’s descendants, because of their unfaithfulness, but not forever.’ ”
But Jeroboam didn’t taken the Lord’s promise to heart. Rather than trusting what God had told him that He would do, and rather than obeying the Lord, keeping His statutes and commands, and walking in His ways, and leading Israel to do the same, Jeroboam became fearful for his position and his life. He worried that if the people of the Northern Kingdom had to keep traveling to Jerusalem in Judah in order to worship at the temple, which was the only place they were supposed to make sacrifices once it was dedicated, then their hearts would turn back toward Rehoboam. So Jeroboam believed that this would be the end of his position and likely the end of his life if it happened. So he came up with a political solution to his problem: he’d just keep the people of Israel from having to go to the temple in Judah.
28 So the king sought advice. Then he made two golden calves, and he said to the people, “Going to Jerusalem is too difficult for you. Israel, here are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” 29 He set up one in Bethel, and put the other in Dan. 30 This led to sin; the people walked in procession before one of the calves all the way to Dan. 31 Jeroboam also made shrines on the high places and made priests from the ranks of the people who were not Levites. 32 Jeroboam made a festival in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the festival in Judah. He offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had made. He also stationed the priests in Bethel for the high places he had made. 33 He offered sacrifices on the altar he had set up in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. He chose this month on his own. He made a festival for the Israelites, offered sacrifices on the altar, and burned incense.
So Jeroboam had made idols for the people to worship, he had turned them aside from worshiping at the Lord’s temple as instructed, he had given them two other places to worship (one of which he put right on the border between Israel and Judah), made additional pagan shrines and appointed inappropriate people as priests, and he even created his own festivals and rules for worship. All of this was an affront to the Word of God given in the Law. He led Israel in a terrible direction.
Now, back to Amos:
“…in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel...”
This gives us a pretty specific time frame for when Amos is preaching. King Uzziah (also called King Azariah) and Jeroboam son of Jehoash, also called Jeroboam II, had overlapping reigns from 783 BC when Uzziah became king in Judah, to 746 BC when Jeroboam II died. So there’s a 37 year window where Amos could have preached.
Remember that Amos was sent by the Lord to preach in Israel, the Northern Kingdom, specifically to the people being ruled by Jeroboam II. Why was this necessary? 2 Kings 14 gives us some indication:
23 In the fifteenth year of Judah’s King Amaziah son of Joash, Jeroboam son of Jehoash became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. 24 He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. He did not turn away from all the sins Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit.
So Jeroboam II did what was evil, continuing to lead Israel in the sins that Jeroboam I had led Israel in. While Jeroboam II had led the Northern Kingdom to a certain amount of success during his reign—they had basically expanded their borders back out to where they had been under Solomon—unfortunately, he didn’t honor God the way that he was supposed to. He didn’t follow the Law, and didn’t do anything to stop his people from ignoring the Law either. The nation of Israel was ripe for the judgment of God. From the time of Jeroboam I to Jeroboam II, about 150 years, the Northern Kingdom of Israel didn’t have a single king about whom the author of 1 and 2 Kings could say, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Amos would be the bringer of that message of judgment.
Let’s finish up our setting with the last phrase in verse 1:
“…two years before the earthquake.”
There has been some archaeological evidence that shows that there was an earthquake in the vicinity in approximately 765 to 760 BC. It apparently was a major enough deal for this notation to be made at the beginning of the book, and major enough to warrant no further explanation about it because his original readers obviously knew what he was referring to.
This places the message of Amos as the earliest of the writing prophets. His written prophecy would have been given in approximately 767 to 762 BC. His words and warnings were the first message of prophecy written down.
I hope that helps us with our setting and situation. I won’t go over that again during this series, but I’ll reference it as necessary.
Verse 2 then is the summary of the message that Amos was to bring:
2 He said: The Lord roars from Zion and makes his voice heard from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.
My quiet time notes from my study of Amos back in March say, “This is how Amos starts. It’s going to be a rough message.”
There are two truths here that we need to see and understand as foundational to everything we’re going to study in this book. The first is this:
1: The LORD roars.
1: The LORD roars.
“The Lord roars from Zion and makes His voice heard from Jerusalem...” Lions and their roars are really important motifs in the book of Amos. God doesn’t say that He is merely speaking here. He’s roaring.
How many here have ever heard a lion roar? We have lions in our zoo, and at times, I have heard them roar personally. I thought I would illustrate this just a little with some help from the AV guys:
LION’S ROAR VIDEO
A lion’s roar is powerful. It can be heard up to 5 miles away, and reaches sound levels of 114 decibels close up (about as loud as a live rock music concert). And while a lion in a zoo isn’t particularly scary… Imagine that wasn’t a zoo. Imagine you’re in the wilderness, alone, in the dark, and you hear that coming from nearby… or even not nearby. You can’t tell me that it wouldn’t scare you.
Through His prophet, the Lord declares that He is roaring: He’s bringing a message with great force, a message that is going to be terrifying. In this message, in fact, the Lord predicts the fall and destruction of the Northern Kingdom, which would take place in 722 BC by the hand of the Assyrians.
The Lord roars. He intends that He be heard.
Listen to the psalmist in Psalm 50:
1 The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks; he summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. 2 From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God appears in radiance. 3 Our God is coming; he will not be silent! Devouring fire precedes him, and a storm rages around him. 4 On high, he summons heaven and earth in order to judge his people: 5 “Gather my faithful ones to me, those who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” 6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God is the Judge. Selah
We often think about the “still, small voice” of the Lord when we think about how He speaks to us, and that’s not wrong. But when the Lord brings correction and judgment, He often doesn’t do so silently. He intends that His voice strike terror in our hearts, like a lion’s roar would.
“But Bill,” you might be thinking, “why are you talking about our loving God as terrifying or scary?” Just because He loves us doesn’t mean that He isn’t scary. Think about what Jesus said in Matthew 10:
28 Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Of course Almighty God is terrifying. In fact, there is no one more terrifying than the Lord God. Isaiah (just after Amos) saw the glory of the Lord in a vision, and his response was to cry out woe upon himself, and declare that just by seeing that much, he was undone in Isaiah 6. Consider what will come as revealed to John in the Revelation:
15 Then the kings of the earth, the nobles, the generals, the rich, the powerful, and every slave and free person hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 because the great day of their wrath has come! And who is able to stand?”
I think that C.S. Lewis was getting at this in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when he envisioned the Pevensie children discussing Jesus as Aslan the Lion with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver:
"Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
God isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King. And He roars.
And His roar has meaning for everyone, of every nation, because of our second point:
2: The LORD is sovereign.
2: The LORD is sovereign.
The last part of verse 2 says:
2 He said: The Lord roars from Zion and makes his voice heard from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.
Amos here uses two extremes to mark off the sum total of where God is sovereign. He says that the pastures (the lowlands) mourn or dry up, and that the summit of Carmel (a high point, especially of pagan worship (Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal took place there) are affected by the Lord’s sovereign judgment. They dry up or wither when He roars. I think that Amos personifies the land here, saying that the pastures and the highlands dry up, much like we do when we are terrified. We wither, losing our vitality and strength. Our mouths get parched and dry when we are afraid. So the land withers. Isaiah uses the same kind of language in Isaiah 33:9:
9 The land mourns and withers; Lebanon is ashamed and wilted. Sharon is like a desert; Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.
As we will see as we get further into Amos in the weeks to come, God’s sovereignty is over not just Israel, but over all nations. He sits in righteous judgment over not just Israel, but over all peoples.
The prophet Jeremiah would later speak of God’s sovereignty over all the nations, using again the picture of the roaring of the Lord:
30 “As for you, you are to prophesy all these things to them, and say to them: The Lord roars from on high; he makes his voice heard from his holy dwelling. He roars loudly over his grazing land; he calls out with a shout, like those who tread grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. 31 The tumult reaches to the ends of the earth because the Lord brings a case against the nations. He enters into judgment with all humanity. As for the wicked, he hands them over to the sword— this is the Lord’s declaration.
There is no physical place safe from the judgment of the Lord, because He is sovereign over everything and everyone, everywhere.
So if God is sovereign over everyone and everything and everywhere, then where does that leave us? It leaves us as either faithful citizens of His righteous kingdom, or as enemies and rebels against His rule. It doesn’t matter whether you like that contrast or not. If we stand against the One who is sovereign, we are rebels… even if we claim to be citizens, which we will see from the people of God in Amos as we move through it.
And whether or not we believe that God is sovereign is going to come to light during this series. Do we believe His Word to be true? Do we believe He is to be obeyed? Do we believe that He is going to judge not just the nations, but His people, us, as well? As we look at this first of written prophecies, are we going to set ourselves up as judges of the Word, or will we submit to allowing the Word of the Lord who roars judge us?
Closing
Closing
We stand here at the beginning of the book of Amos. Likewise, we stand at a critical moment in the life of the church, the nation, and the world. The sovereign Lord roars from Zion, and we must be ready to listen. If you already belong to Christ, you are already a citizen of the kingdom of God, then I pray that over the next several weeks, we will reflect on where we are in rebellion against our sovereign King. Where should He roar at us? Where have we created idols and altars to false gods, or trusted in something other than Him for our hope and salvation? We must be prepared to repent.
This morning, I’ve shared a message that might sound a little off-putting for those of you who might just be checking out God today. Understand that God is all that I said He is, and way, way more. And it is our sin: our desire to go our own way and do our own thing, our desire to not have to answer to Him or to anyone else, that separates us from Him on an eternal scale. It means that we deserve hell. He does love us because He made us, but we reject His love over and over when we choose to pursue a life of sin.
But the incredible thing about God’s love is that even though He must judge sin because He is just and holy, He did so by pouring out the punishment for our sin on His own Son, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life in our place and so was able to pay the penalty that we owe. He died on a cross so that we could be forgiven if we surrender our lives to His grace, living not for ourselves, but for Him. And He beat death and rose from the grave according to the Scriptures, and He will never die again. If we belong to Him, we also escape that spiritual death of hell, and have a future in heaven with Him to look forward to. I said that there is no physical place that is safe from God’s sovereign judgment. This is true: but there is a place where that judgment against your sin has already been poured out and covered. And that place is found in surrendering to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
You can surrender your life to Christ right now, wherever you are, by giving up your right to yourself, and trusting in Jesus as Lord to save you. There’s hope. If you surrender to Christ today, we want to be able to talk with you about it, help you as you begin this walk, and pray for you. Please email one of us, put it on the comments on Facebook, or text 505-339-2004 and let us know so that we can connect with you.
Not doing an in-person invitation just yet. Donna will play some reflective music for us while we consider the truth of God’s Word. You are also welcome to use this time to give your offering in you are doing so online. We will have plates out for you to drop your offering in as you leave the sanctuary after the end of service if you’d like to give physically.
PRAY
DONNA
Remember that we can’t really hang out in the building once service is over, to allow the cleaning crew to get it sanitized and then home to their families. Thank you for joining us this morning for worship. Feel free to have COVID-safe conversation in the courtyard or out front. Otherwise, follow the instructions of Joe and Kerry (and Trevor?) as they release you row-by-row starting at the back. If you’re parked in the north parking lot, you are free to head that way once they get to your row. God bless you, and hopefully, we’ll see you on Saturday!